


Born for the Joke

by thatsrightdollface



Series: Gothamstuck/Gothamswap Stories [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arkham Asylum, Brothers, Crossover, Gamzee and Kurloz have spooky powers, Gen, Gotham shenanigans, Humanstuck, I may've gotten carried away, Joker Cult, M/M, METAhumanstuck?, Mind Control, Oh wait, except in the world of DC comics, friendship and identity, lots of swearing because it's Homestuck, this is honestly longer than I meant it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-01 02:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11476986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Gamzee Makara had always idolized the Batman, until the day he learned he'd never been supposed to.  That wasn't the sort of hand life had dealt him, you know?  Somehow, he'd come up with a hand full of Joker cards.





	1. Curtains Back!  Set Up the Stage!

**Author's Note:**

> I've thought for a long, long time about doing a story featuring Gamzee in Gotham. :) Ahhhhh, I hope if you read this you enjoy it! I had a lot of fun with this one. 
> 
> There will be 3 chapters, and it's all written already so I'll post it soon~

The first time Gamzee Makara’s dad was arrested, he didn’t understand exactly what for.  Same with the second time, and the third – it must have been something “normal,” he’d reasoned in a vague, wandering sort of way, like how a motherfucker might remember a dream just before the taste of it really faded.  It was, like, a driving fuck-up, or robbing someplace.  Must’ve been.  They were from Gotham, you know, and Gotham was all motherfucking sewer-slick tiles leading the way down Crime Alley.  It was searchlights catching the dust and dried-up bloodstains in old cathedrals, framing all those holy statues like tricksy not-quite halos.  And Gamzee was a child, back then.  That had something to do with how it all went down, for motherfucking sure.

That hunched and wild-eyed Mr. Makara would be put away for a while, see?  And Gamzee’s brother Kurloz would heat up toaster waffles, then.  Aunts and uncles in clown paint would come by, smearing and grinning and screaming, with painted on tears, sometimes, that Gamzee used to worry about.  It would be okay, though, he always knew.  Kurloz let him watch TV until the sun started up on rising – Kurloz walked him to school instead of just slipping out on his own with friends whose names Gamzee was resigned to never, ever knowing.  It wasn’t so bad, to fall asleep to Kurloz’s silence, or the dull pounding of music from his fancy stolen headphones.  Kurloz always stayed home when their dad was away, and he kept water coming out of the taps, kept surprises in the fridge.  He wore the same skeleton hoodie nearly every day, and it smelled like smoke wherever he went. 

And anyways, Gamzee knew his dad always came back on safe nights, with the Bat Signal lighting up the whole sky like a second moon, like a spotlight stretching up to the tippy-top of the circus tent to show off a favorite acrobat.  That felt like an omen, like a blessing – the way it was to stand underneath the smoky sky and finally see a star.  The way it felt when you were home alone and all of a sudden all the flashing police cars drove away, and the sirens cut off for a little while.  Gamzee’s dad came home _protected_.  Yeah. 

It was weird later, thinking on how there’d been a time when Gamzee’d been like, _“Aw shit.  The Batman’s on the prowl,”_ with a little motherfucking smile, like any other kid might wear – he’d let Tavros draw bat signals on his skin, too, like a brand, a sense of protection neither of them would have been able to put words to.  Gamzee wondered about stuff like if Batman bought expired bread and sugary cereals at his very own supermarket, same as plenty of other kids he knew.  Karkat said there was no fucking way – said Batman had to be some posh jerkwad who’d probably never eaten cereal in his life… But Tavros swore he’d seen the Batman buy people Pokémon cards a couple times.  The fearsome Dark Knight had ruffled those kids’ hair before walking right on in his enormous hulking bat-boots.

Gamzee knew what he liked to believe, you know?  Even if it probably wasn’t true.  Even if Karkat snapped at him a little, or stomped on his foot under the table.  Karkat had been Gamzee’s best friend, back then, so it’d been alright.  They got partnered up in art class, sometimes – Gamzee laughing over oily finger-paint rainbows, Karkat carefully sketching out couples from movies he liked.  Drew them kissing, holding hands.  Pressed down so hard that his pencil lead snapped over and over, you know? Gamzee would drawl on about how amazing all those drawings were, and even later he couldn’t really remember them as anything but great.  Even a lot, a lot later.  Sometimes he woke up thinking Tavros might still want to practice raps with him in the alley behind the school, by that one scraggly weed that somehow didn’t die no matter how many cigarette butts got ground into what was supposed to be its motherfucking earth.  Sometimes he forgot he wasn’t supposed to smile goofily at Karkat, asleep behind his own eyes, thinking about what all had happened the night before.  Wondering if the paint on his face hid the bruises well enough.  See, things had changed pretty fast for Gamzee.  It was hard to keep up. 

Sometimes he still dreamt of Bat Signal nights as safe, like good and steady omens. 

Too motherfucking bad, right?          

…

The first, second and third arrests…  Fucking _fine_.  It happened, around Gotham.  Then, of course,  some of the Riddler’s thugs hit up Gamzee’s middle school to get back at the actual honest-to-God _Joker_ , with his stretched-plastic grin reaching far too far, his teeth yellow and creaking as if they might crack apart.  The Joker like a nightmare – the Joker like candy going to rot, like carnival music with screams mixed in.  Innocence lost, in all the ways a motherfucker could think of, you know?  Joker Cult. 

Gamzee had grown up surrounded by clown sketches stapled to his apartment walls – his childhood nightlight had been a glowing clown face with a huge smile and a red plastic nose.  Clowns were for laughter, for wide-eyed awe – for warmth and showmanship, for defying gravity.  They didn’t always have to be the Joker’s brand, following his preaching in gibbering mobs all through the streets, watering the asphalt with blood, changing the air to laughing chemical soup.  Gamzee had explained it to Karkat before and just gotten himself laughed at.  But then the Riddler’s people, with their tilted bowler hats and snappy suspenders, their question marks scrawled on every-fucking-thing.  But then the Joker Cult. 

And that, you know, _that_ changed things.  The Joker Cult always changed things. 

So Riddler’s people hit up Gamzee’s school, and they cracked his skull against a locker, and they turned the world all screeching bloody for a little while.  Gamzee and three other kids.  _Decoy kids_ , it turned out later.  Gamzee learned a lot of things later, like that he’d been in the back of a van for most of that motherfucking “adventure” – the things crashing against him had included an old refrigerator full of look-alike body parts, full of clues to leave behind for Mistah J.  Bones crushed against each other, mashing into something _else_.  Pulpy and raw and smearing all over the fridge walls…   Maybe it was better Gamzee hadn’t known, as it was happening.  That might have been something like kindness, from the Riddler.  Or maybe it was just an oversight, that nobody had thought to tell him where all those smushed fingers came from.

Sure, usually Riddler baited the GCPD, baited Batman, but the Joker had gotten a new toy and was kind of wading into what old Eddie Nygma considered “his turf.”  You hear that, motherfucker?  “His Turf,” like one masked creep could own the streets, could own the tricks.  One of the Joker’s goons had stepped forward with his eyes all flickering purple neon and said he could outwit them _all_.  Riddler, too, he’d said.  He said he had schemes no one had schemed yet; he said when he reached into your brain, you couldn’t shake his fingers out, and he’d puppet you all around the motherfucking place.  And he did those very things, sometimes.  And he did those very things more times than the Riddler would’ve liked. 

And so, Eddie thought – stir the pot.  Learn about this new henchguy and make him squirm.  Maybe Joker would kill his new toy, for causing all this trouble.  Maybe he’d cut him loose.  It was worth a go, Ed reasoned.  It was worth a little kid, you know?  Wasn’t it? 

A kid that should’ve died in the back of that van.  Almost died.  Should have?  Gamzee could have sworn his skull got good and smashed.  Gamzee could’ve sworn his bones should have stayed broken. 

Guess who it was, though?  The Joker’s motherfucking toy.

Guess.  Who.

Yeah, motherfucker.  Yeah.

…

Gamzee’s dad dragged him by his scabbed-over t-shirt, and presented him to the Joker just a couple breaths after they got him back, said, “He’ll be worth saving, Boss.”  His voice was low and scratchy, unreadable as ever.  Angry, maybe?  Hopeful, like a trained attack dog?  Gamzee heard so many things in it, then, that he wouldn’t have heard before.  Kurloz watched from the crowd of henchmen gathered around, a slumped semicircle, all painted up, loopy with Joker gas, with a calling of despair and inevitability.  The Joker Cult promised so many things.  Kurloz raised a single finger against his lips, smiled at Gamzee.  His skeleton hoodie hung loosely on him, as if he was shrinking back into his own bones.       

The Joker sneered.  He was flopped across his throne like a limp doll – above them, amusement park rides thundered, children screeched, and cotton candy was sold in sugar spun bouquets.  The Clown Prince of Crime followed the carnival, spreading out beneath it like rot in the walls.  His voice was as wound up as a slinky, lilting one moment and dark as a Batman-less night the next.  It was so much more _real_ than it seemed over news broadcasts – Gamzee felt it in his spine like nails on a chalkboard.  “I just don’t _know_ , Makara.  You’ve been fun, but does this kid have your same tricks?”

“Not the same,” Gamzee’s dad had declared, unflinching.  He didn’t even glance down to Gamzee, not at all.  “But they could end up even better.  Everyone in my family’ll have something.  It’s our blood.” 

“Useful, royal blood,” the Joker giggled.  “You’re so _sure_!  It’s _funny_!”     

“I better be funny,” said Gamzee’s father.  His fist was big enough to fit around Gamzee’s leg, if he’d wanted it to.  His hair was knotted and long; his smile was filed into yellowing fangs.  Gamzee had seen those fangs so many times he sometimes forgot they hadn’t just sprouted like that.  More like, he sometimes forgot they were actually _intended_ to be scary.  “You’d kill a clown that wasn’t.  Said it yourself.  _Such_ a pep talk, Boss.”

The Joker laughed, then, neck cracking back maybe farther than should have been possible, eyes yellowed and bloodshot and burning with chemicals.   He crowed, “I gotta be funny – I’m a clown’ – ahaaaa, I shouldn’t give that to you, you know.  It’s mine; I’ve used it on Batsy.  I swear it almost made him smile.  But I _like_ presents with mystery gifts inside!  And your son’ll follow me, just like you?  No fuss, no muss, no tearful phone calls to Bats the second my back is turned?”

“He’s family,” said Gamzee’s father, simply.  Gamzee tried not to think about the smell of rotting that had been soaked into the back of the Riddler’s van, rotting and _glue_ , of all things, like for school projects.  He tried not to think about how all his friends would know he was one of the four kids chosen.  Four, like card suits.  Four, which in Japanese sounded sort of like the word for death.  Unlucky number.  An unlucky hint.  One of the kids had been found underneath a high-stakes gambling ring gathered in the back of some Japanese restaurant, his father said later.  He said it laughing, which Gamzee was just beginning to learn was gonna be pretty normal from then on out, now that they were talking about _truth_ together.  That girl under the Japanese place didn’t make it, but Gamzee had, and all his friends would have to decide if they thought it was fair. 

Staring into the Joker’s impossibly bright, glassy eyes, Gamzee didn’t want to think about anything.  Not how Karkat’s face might change, if he ever learned why Gamzee had been saved.  Not what he’d been saved _for_ – what any powers he might have carried like secrets in his blood were supposed to do.  Not that his father was sometimes a person called “Punchline” – named after his enormous toothed club, a club which had ripped plenty of motherfuckers’ skin clean off to dangle in whimsically gory streamers.  Not that “Punchline” kept somehow possessing judges into releasing him, juries into favoring him, Arkham Asylum orderlies into ushering him right the fuck out while holding the door all polite for him…  Not anything.

It was a while before Gamzee returned to school.  He knew his life, by the time he did, and he knew it would be impossible to hold Tavros’s books for him the same way, to look Karkat straight in the eye like two bros with no secrets rotting the air between them.  Gamzee’d talk to both of them in his head, as he tossed cans of Joker gas into windows and listened to the laughter rising, rising inside.  He’d talk to both of them about what else a clown could mean, but only sometimes.  Less and less, as time went on. 

He got to know how it was to take baseball bats to windows, to bones. 

He got to know the smell of money burning.  It burned even when there wasn’t enough cash around to make the rent without busting out Punchline and his crackling, impossible eyes.

 And, _and_ he learned to juggle around the same motherfucking time he learned what it would be like to kill.  That’s how it was, you know?  That’s how it had to be.

Gamzee was family, just like his father said.  

Years passed, then.       


	2. Off to Arkham!  What the Motherfuck is That?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loooots of headcanons/Gotham-y story modifications in this chapter... Ahhh, I had too much fun with this, but I hope it worked out okay. If you read it, I hope you have fun!!
> 
> Also -- I really like Grant Morrison's comic "Arkham Asylum: a Serious House on Serious Earth," so the fate of our old friend Amadeus Arkham is from there. :) 
> 
> I'll post the third and final chapter in a couple days~

Gamzee had discovered it dulled his powers – put them right the fuck to sleep, brother – when he got himself high and drifting on stuff the Joker made.  Green, slimy laughing stuff that didn’t have a name yet, you know?  Mixed up nice and special in the Joker’s carnival laboratory, right by the radioactive cotton candy machine.  And so he ate that slime, and he put the powers to sleep until he really needed them.  If Joker minded, he didn’t say shit – Gamzee could’ve sworn he even winked, one time, and the chemical gleam of his green, green eyes was so like the slime it was almost beautiful.

Maybe eating that shit was why nobody’d given Gamzee a real supervillain name, yet.  Kurloz was gonna be Punchline, someday, just like their dad – it was the flashy eyes and the brain control, probably.  It was the smirking ambition; it was motherfucking destiny.  Gamzee was still one of the guys in the back, though.  He wore clown paint.  He wore rubber masks.  Sometimes it felt like he was floating far, far away from the meat of himself, far away from the Joker gas fog, far away from all that shrieking laughter.  That was nicest, really.  When he was part of something bigger than himself, and he’d go home with Kurloz as part of the team, but he didn’t have to feel almost anything.

Gamzee hadn’t eaten any slime, that day. 

He was strolling up to Arkham Asylum’s twisting wrought iron gates, approaching from the side away from the street.  Not a lot of motherfuckers came this way, but there were footprints here and there.  Places where high heels had sunk into the mud.  You know.  He was blinking blearily up at the crows as they circled that screaming, dying place.  Carrion birds knew what was up, brother.  Carrion birds knew what Arkham really was. 

Gamzee kicked a rock, and his huge, bulbous clown shoe kinda honk-squeaked against it.  You know, like a horn.  Like a rubber duck.  If those shoes didn’t have crusty blood dried into the laces, so deep Gamzee hadn’t quite been able to scrub it all out, they might’ve even been funny to _other_ people.  The air smelled like Gotham’s sour river, like all the trash and shit and body parts that had been dumped into that grey wet over the years.  It had been a gross, sticky place since long before Gamzee was born, brother.  And if he died that day, died doing what he had to do, it would stay a gross, sticky place long after he was gone.   

Arkham Asylum was crooked against the horizon.  Gamzee smoothed some tangled curls out of his eyes, and thought about the dark, rotten place inside him where his magics came from.  He reached out from inside himself, and found the guards’ minds.  One motherfucker was playing an internet game on his computer, like he damn sure wasn’t supposed to do.  Two lady guards were whispering all hush-hush about what they’d have to do to keep Poison Ivy from wilting, while still not giving her a good way back to the growing world.  Another guy was trimming his mustache in the bathroom, wondering if it made him look more like Police Commissioner Gordon.  Gamzee thought he was doing a pretty good job.  It didn’t really matter, though.  Spinning a little dream-web was easy enough, because no one was expecting it – nobody really knew Joker had a clown around who could do that shit.  Catching people up inside a dream, easy.  Holding them still, watching them fall, making sure they didn’t crack their heads open on desks and bathroom tiles…  Easy, easy, easy.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered if some of the guards had died, Gamzee reminded himself.  Maybe Joker would’ve even crowed something like, _“Hey, good job, kid!”_    Kurloz would’ve done it.  Would’ve killed them all, probably.

That’s why Gamzee was there, you know.  At Arkham.  He was there for Kurloz. 

Joker tended to like it when people knew it was _him_ that did whatever the fuck he’d been doing.  Something about credit where it was due; something about an eternal war for Gotham’s soul between him and his hate-crush Batman.  So that was probably part of why Gamzee made sure all the guards would dream about a circus-world, a planet of tents and mirth as far as the eye could see.  The air was sticky-sweet caramel, there, and hazy with sugar, with fire-breath smoke.  Unicycles raced, tipsy and swaying – acrobats swung over the streets, their costumes raining sequins, their eyes wide and sharp with chemical laughter.  The stars were hazy fireworks far away.  Every tent held wonders inside, and no one was dying, no one was dying all over the world.

…

There were a lot of fucked up lives, in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.  Emphasis on _criminally_ , given their city, given the number of people Dollmaker had stitched into patchwork corpse dolls, given the number of people Two-Face shot up because a coin told him to.  Gamzee knew that’d be the motherfucking case – honestly, it was hard to forget about the place when you ran with the Joker Cult.  Always somebody whispering Arkham horror stories.  Always somebody talking about Amadeus Arkham himself, reduced to scraping away his fingers bloody raw and shivering against the stone in his own goddamn pet project asylum.  Carving words and words and words, thinking about his daughter’s head in her dollhouse, thinking about how pointless it’d always been to believe he could help anyone at all. 

Gamzee thought he might’ve passed Mr.  Arkham’s personal cell, when he checked the basement for Kurloz.  There was the drip, drip of wet on tile.  There was a hissing, bubbling scream that didn’t sound like it came from a human throat.  And there were scratches in the floor, brother, scratches that could’ve been words and words and words.

But there wasn’t any Kurloz, down there, that Gamzee could tell.  And so he walked softly on, with his clown shoes honking only a little.  He’d looked for Kurloz’s mind as if he might put it to sleep.  Solid trick, you know, brother?  Like an actual telepath.  Like one of the real players in this metahuman game might’ve thought of.  But then he climbed up higher to where the cells weren’t so faceless, with glass walls and nameplates next to the doors. 

This was all the Bat’s fault, people said, brother.  And who’s to say they were wrong?  It would've made Gamzee feel better, strolling through Arkham’s watery yellow-light halls, smelling the dank of the stone and deep-soaked rot, if all those Joker Cult stories had a point.  It would've made him feel better about the way Mad Hatter nodded to him, snuffling his nose and smiling wide, as if they were friends.  It would've made him feel better about the way Scarecrow stepped forward expectantly, as if Gamzee might’ve come for him alone.  Cells labeled “Clayface,” “Killer Croc,” “Jane Doe.”  Cells like displays in a zoo; cells like well-lit jewelry cases in one of those fancy stores.  Jeremiah Arkham both treating and showing off his collection.

Kurloz wouldn’t be with these big-name villains, though, Gamzee reasoned.  This was where the actual Joker might crouch, smiling as if he knew all your secrets.  Sure, maybe someday Kurloz would be up there, too, Joker’s elite henchman just like their dad – with a name and an extensive arrest record, with a distinctive look that would probably scare the shit out of people.  For now, he was just some kid who’d been found in his girlfriend’s house, messily stitching his lips shut with a cutesy pocket sewing kit and covered in all kinds of blood.  Meulin Leijon styled her hair like Harley Quinn, and wore schoolgirl skirts with long socks.  She had started dropping by their apartment a while ago, and she’d brought goofy DVDs with her, and she’d taken the time to learn Gamzee’s name.  Kurloz carried her perfume smell around with him now, pretty much all the time.  Along with his skeleton hoodie, along with his smoke. 

Gamzee’d been actually dumbstruck, like in the movies, when he’d found out people were saying Kurloz had stabbed _Meulin’s_ ears with crooked, thorn-like knives.  Why Meulin, of all people?  And then – holy fucking _shit_ – the story changed.  Meulin herself woke up, eyes staring and watery, completely deafened and claiming Kurloz had screamed out in a nightmare… Screamed the kind of impossible, inhuman screams that had burst her ears, that had torn them to ribbons.  The GCPD’s Midnight Shift looked into it; the motherfucking Spectre was on the case, people said.  Bats crowded the investigations – skulking around in Jim Gordon’s shadow, gathering data, swabbing blood off stuff and snagging hair samples.   Bats and Joker sympathizers, media mobs…  Enough riled-up motherfuckers that Kurloz was going to be sent to Metropolis for his trial if Gamzee couldn’t do his job right.

And it was his job, only his.  Had to be.  Because if it’d been a _dream_ that got Kurloz, who else could’ve sent that shit? 

Their dad said, _“We need to test you, my son,”_ and Joker added _“Yeah, like throwing a bouncy ball against the wall to see how much fun you’ll get out of it!”_

Their dad said, _“We need to know you’re loyal.  Still family.  We need to know where you stand,”_ and the Joker added, _“I absolutely get trying to trip your brother up every now and again, but you gotta pick up the pieces for this one, kid.”_

So when Poison Ivy waved to Gamzee, he waved back, smiling shakily.  When the Riddler crowed, “I know _you_ – and how did your dear old daddy solve my puzzles, again?” he put him right the fuck to sleep, dreaming of unanswerable questions, dreaming of mazes without openings, where everybody else seemed to know the secrets but him.  Eddie wouldn’t remember much else, when he woke up, Gamzee didn’t think.  He’d wake up shaking and feverish, with the maze still uncoiling behind his eyes.  Gamzee had never minded that kind of maze, those kinds of questions – he’d discovered sometimes it was actually better not to know everything.

For a second, Gamzee _did_ think he saw something that might’ve been a darting, living shadow – that might’ve been the Batman.  He froze, first, and then eased his stained and patched-up backpack around to slide out his juggling clubs. The zipper was loud, in that place.  Gamzee’s breath was loud; shifting in his cheerful clown shoes was loud, loud, loud.  His hands found their way easily into the worn-away outlines of his fingers, along those juggling clubs – his clubs had seen a lot of action, seen a lot of bruises, seen a lot of cracked jaws.

Gamzee waited, and breathed, and swung his clubs experimentally to see how it would feel to be a villain in the actual Arkham Asylum.  He felt watched from the treatment room cages – watched from all sides…

But still…  No Bat.

So Gamzee walked on.

…

Gamzee still had his juggling clubs out, swinging at his sides, by the time he found Kurloz’s cell.  His palms were sweaty, and his mouth tasted like clown paint leaking in around the edges of his lips.  This was it – this was the moment, this was his motherfucking _proof_. 

Kurloz had changed a great deal, over the last little while – his lips were a smear of blood through the stitches.  When he smiled, the thread bunched up strangely around his raw cuts, around the scabs, like if a rag doll tried making faces that hadn’t been motherfucking planned out for it.  Just eerie, kind of.  Just unnatural.  Gamzee would’ve never expected one of his big brother’s smiles to look _unnatural_. 

But it wasn’t only the stitching that was different about Kurloz.  He was gaunt and ragged, without his skeleton clown paint on.  It looked as though he hadn’t eaten well in months, nevermind just his little stint in Arkham.  The shadows stuck around his eyes like smeary makeup, like dripping mascara.  He’d filed his teeth, just like their father’s.  When had he done that?  Gamzee couldn’t remember.  Might’ve been the slime’s fault.  And Kurloz’s eyes flickered, flickered ineffectually.  He was sitting in a box the Bat had made for Punchline, a while back, that had never gotten used.  It kept all his thoughts in, you know?  Kurloz’s eyes were like purple static, like he was reaching out and trying to grab at mind after mind after mind.  It reminded Gamzee of undead hands stretching out into darkness, like in a zombie movie or something – trying to latch onto anything at all.  More than that, maybe, it reminded Gamzee of the kind of desperation he’d only ever really felt when he got suddenly dragged from the back of the Riddler’s van into the Joker’s lair, and figured out why his whole world had always been sideways.

Gamzee didn’t mean to be suddenly – momentarily! – really, really afraid of Kurloz.  It just happened. 

It was hard to step forward.  He tucked his clubs behind his back, even, as though he had something to be ashamed of.

“Hey, Kurloz,” Gamzee offered.  His voice creaked, as if it hadn’t been used in a while.  But he must’ve used it, earlier, right?  Talking to his dad, and the Joker?

“SO YOU DID COME FOR ME,” Kurloz’s voice echoed through Gamzee’s mind, fainter than it really should’ve been thanks to the Batman’s magic box.  It felt like clattering bones, like a cocky, sauntering ringmaster, like someone neither of them had ever met sitting on his own throne in a room all done up with finger-paint blood murals.  How Gamzee knew that, he couldn’t have told you.  He just knew things, sometimes.  “I WASN’T SURE THEY WERE GOING TO KEEP YOU ALIVE.”

Gamzee flinched.  Was that regret, in Kurloz’s mind-voice?  Why?  Would he have wanted Gamzee dead?  Or would he have blamed himself, if something happened?  If their dad happened – if the Joker happened. “I wouldn’t’ve sent you against Meulin, bro.  You know that, right?”

“YEAH, GAMZEE,” Kurloz said, and his eyes stopped flashing.  They were just white pits, then, hollow and new.  A stranger’s.  Maybe that was why his smile felt so wrong.  Kurloz had walked Gamzee to school, once upon a time; Kurloz had heated up ravioli and microwave waffles.  Kurloz had been one of the safest things Gamzee could imagine.  “YEAH, I KNOW THAT.”

Shadows danced all around them, as Gamzee set about trying to get the locks of Kurloz’s cell to open.  And that’s not “danced” like cars swooping by on the street outside while you’re trying to sleep, making shadows whoosh across the room.  No, it was something else.  Just a little fluttering, at first, and then a lot more – Gamzee tried to tune it out, but that became impossible pretty fast.  It was fluttering, and distant screeching, and something far away coming closer.  Gamzee had some toys the Joker packed up nice and neat in his backpack’s front pocket, along with a couple terrible knock-knock jokes.  The toys were supposed to work quickly, if Gamzee could be quick, too.  He thought if he hurried up, the noises wouldn’t matter. 

If anything, the fluttering shadows made Kurloz smile wider.  He tapped on the glass for Gamzee’s attention – Joker’s lock-picking toys went clattering to the floor, kinda horrible, kinda slapstick.  “YOU LED THE BATS TO US, BROTHER,” Kurloz said.  Had he always looked at Gamzee so coldly, pityingly?

“Shit,” Gamzee whispered, and leaned back to see.   The hall was staring, heavy as it had ever been, but bats were careening outside one of Arkham’s pointed gothic windows, leathery and primal and seeming to pour out of the night itself.  Gamzee glanced from them – from the dark, from a dull glow that might’ve been the Bat Signal dangling like a promise over the city – back into Arkham, and then he saw _him_.  Someone was coming down the stretching, expectant hallway, someone who moved like water, someone who wore a dark mask with lit-up electric eyes.  This someone dropped from up above, from the ceiling, from _behind_ the ceiling, turning a neat somersault in the air.  He caught himself; he smiled wide.

“Shit,” Gamzee said, again.  He couldn’t for the life of him think of anything else to say.


	3. Enter Nightwing, and then Swing Those Goddamn Curtains Shut!

Nightwing was not the Batman.  Nightwing was laughter in the darkness; he was what it meant to bow all whimsically at the cops trying to bring him in before darting away again, too quick, too smooth, you know?  A trickster spirit, grown from Batman’s shadow into something new.  Fucking amazing, really.  Gamzee was almost glad it was Nightwing cornering him there with his back against Kurloz’s cell, the Joker’s lock-picking toys at his feet.  This was less permanent than being hunted by the Batman, maybe?  He thought of the Bat Signals Tavros had scribbled on his arms in marker, back in the day.  He thought of how he’d watched that last smeary little bat fade and fade on the back of his hand as his life changed completely.  He hadn’t been able to go back then, and he couldn’t go back now. 

Nightwing winked at crooks right before he fucking _got_ them, Gamzee knew.  He hummed that “Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” song as if he – like the Joker, no, _more_ than the Joker – belonged to the safe and awestruck circus world Gamzee had grown up believing in.  Gamzee felt his lip curling up before he’d really thought about it – carnival sparkles and frenzy.  This guy had jokes that ended in justice, not death.  To say that Gamzee was jealous would’ve been putting it lightly, right?  Maybe he’d been born without a motherfucking chance, or maybe he’d just missed all the ways he could’ve gone different.  Son of Punchline, born into the Joker Cult.  There you go, motherfucker.

“I hate that we had to meet this way, kid,” Nightwing said.  His voice was surprising, all warmth and regret.  Either he was a damn good actor, or he actually meant this shit.  “We’ve been keeping an eye on you guys – me and Batman, obviously, haha – and we know you must be pretty scared right now.  I mean, scared in a really tough way, of course.  Hey, I’d be scared too!  Arkham’s a scary place.”  Nightwing’s smile flickered, for a second, and he tilted his head, speaking to the middle distance.  He was talking to one of the other Bats, back in their caves, probably.  “Aw, no – Oracle!  Ye of little faith!  I’m not insulting him.  I’m trying to _connect_!”

“I hate that we have to meet this way, too, motherfucker,” Gamzee said.  He’d tried to make his voice playful as Nightwing’s own, but it wasn’t coming out that way – it was rough and dark, like a still-bleeding slice carved off his father.  Punchline’s leftovers.  “If you know me, you know I gotta get my brother back.  That’s just how is, right?”

“I know how it feels,” said Nightwing, taking steps closer, nice and slow.  He didn’t lunge when Gamzee bent down to pick up one of his bone-breaking clubs, or when he twirled it like an actual performer might, trying to look all on top of shit.  Nightwing didn’t even seem surprised, honestly.  “I know you feel trapped.  I know you turn everything off sometimes – I know you’re up in your head.  I’ve met people like you, before… Raised to be things they might not have wanted to be.  You aren’t as alone as you think you are.”

Gamzee tended to confide most in his imaginary brain-Karkat, during moments like this when he wanted to spill his guts out but probably shouldn’t.  He could’ve asked Nightwing about these other people, about how he knew Gamzee wasn’t alone.  He could’ve been all, _“I am so scared,” _and gotten a little motherfucking understanding out of all this mess.  But instead he thought to himself, to a Karkat that never really was – _I don’t know what to fucking say to this guy.  I don’t know what he’s playing at.  Should I bash his brains in?  What would make you hate me the least, brother?_

Maybe, in another world, Karkat could’ve answered back.  Could’ve been something like a moral compass, you know?  Like Nightwing – Robin – to Batman, or the other fucking way around.  Karkat had been right, long ago – the Batman probably hadn’t shopped at Gamzee’s favorite supermarket.  It probably hadn’t been right to skip class and jokey rap battle behind the school, either.  So many times, looking back, Karkat had been right on the level.

“Maybe let’s go talk, okay?” Nightwing asked, hands raised in something like a _Stay Back_ kinda thing, in something like supplication.

Gamzee watched him inching closer, searching, waiting for something he couldn’t have named.  He noticed the exact moment when Kurloz’s eyes flashed purple static, because it was reflected in the dark of Nightwing’s mask, in the cold, knowing electricity of his eyes.

“LET ME OUT QUICKLY, AND I’LL GET HIM,” Kurloz said, simply, steadily.  His voice cracked like all the bones were breaking.  He’d made sure Nightwing heard him, too – Gamzee could see it flash across the hero’s face.  A recognition.  A disgust.

“Gamzee, listen to me,” Nightwing said.  “You shouldn’t give him what he wants until you know the truth.”

“What truth, brother?” Gamzee managed to choke out, finally.  Why was his voice so strange?  All his limbs felt heavy, without the slime – everything felt further away than he’d remembered it, back when he was a kid.  Back before.  “What truth except he’s my blood and my brother, and we’ve got fucking work to do?  Got a calling, same as you do?”

There was something about naming his blood, about having a calling to go back to, wasn’t there?  Gamzee crouched and picked up one of the Joker’s tools in his free hand.  He shuffled back, eyes still glued to Nightwing, and started fiddling with the lock again.  He probably should’ve practiced, back at the carnival base.  Why hadn’t the Joker gotten him to practice?  Had he been _supposed_ to get caught?

Fuck it.  That thought was basically blasphemy.

“We know about the slime,” said Nightwing.  It was a fucking accusation, even, and at first Gamzee thought it was directed at him.  What did he have to be sorry for?  There was this shit Joker had lying around – molded into fucking pies, mind you – and there wasn’t always food at home.  Sometimes they just couldn’t keep stuff in the fridge anymore.  The Joker hadn’t said shit about it – wasn’t a fucking problem, you know? 

But then, Gamzee saw Nightwing was staring right at Kurloz, electric eyes narrowed, lip curled like it might’ve if he was looking at the Joker himself.  Oh.  Oh, it was _Kurloz_ Nightwing was accusing of something.  Accusing of the slime.

“LET ME OUT, GAMZEE.  IT’S ALRIGHT.  I’LL DO THIS FOR YOU,” said Kurloz.  Thought Kurloz?  He thought it with such force, anyway, that it throbbed like a headache against Gamzee’s skull.   The Joker's lock-picking toy shivered in his hand, sweaty and hot, the metal feeling somehow feverish.  Gamzee breathed, and the act of it rattled all through him.  Breath wasn’t supposed to do that, generally, he didn’t think.  He rubbed clown paint away from the inside of his lips, a little, with a sleeve.  It left an oily smear. 

“You were always _supposed_ to eat it,” Nightwing said, gaze flicking back to Gamzee, now.  His voice softened; his lips untwisted, expressive and changeable in a way somehow opposite both Batman’s rigidity and the Joker’s eternal manic smile.  “It dulled you.  No – even Oracle examined the slime’s components, double-checking my work, and _it rotted you_.  There are parts of your brain you might not have complete access to ever again.  You know why?”

“HE KNOWS ENOUGH,” thought Kurloz.  “HE KNOWS WHAT OUR GIFTS WERE ALWAYS FOR.”

“I know you’re not an ‘evil’ person, Gamzee,” Nightwing offered.  His voice was so gentle, it almost hurt more than Kurloz’s thundering, more than his rage.  “What Joker did with the parts of your mind he influenced – that’s not on you.  Remember that, when I tell you _things_ have been happening for a while.  We had to start looking into it all.  That’s our job!  To protect and serve – only sneaky like, with a lot more flips involved.”  Nightwing blinked, glanced to the middle distance again.  “I’m trying to make him laugh,” he said.  “I don’t think the poor kid laughs enough.”

“This is _fucked up_ , what you’re on about, brother,” Gamzee said.  What else could he say?  “I don’t remember any of this shit.  I don’t remember any – are you saying I actually –?  Fuck that.  _Fuck_ that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nightwing, and Gamzee thought back without really meaning to, thought back to the last time someone actually apologized to him.  It was Tavros, probably.  It must have been for something small.

“Meulin?” Gamzee asked, because he had to.  Because that was why they were all there, that night, hanging out at Arkham Asylum as the bats wheeled around outside, screaming just like the people down in their cells beneath the earth.

“Meulin,” Nightwing agreed.  “Though we speculate that was a misfire.  Kurloz tried to ‘operate’ you, if you will – no, I just couldn’t think of a better word, um – and thought of himself a little too much when sending you commands.  It went badly.  Now, I know you’re horrified –”

“Of course I’m fucking horrified –” Gamzee tried.

“WE ALL ARE,” thought Kurloz, his eyes shivering back awake, a frenzy of light, disquieting in a way Gamzee never would have expected.  He hated that, feeling disquieted.  He hated almost believing what the Bat’s protégé had to say – about his life, about his world, about his family.  Kurloz’s face reminded him of a mask, somehow.  Limp.  Painted on features, too still for any of the emotion in his voice.  “NONE OF US INTENDED THIS.  WE WILL DO BETTER, IN THE FUTURE.  RIGHT, BROTHER?”

“Ten bucks says the Joker had a pretty good idea what was gonna happen,” Nightwing chirped.  Then he cleared his throat, and sobered.  “I guess you _should_ know Kurloz was really upset about the mistake, at least.  We’ve got all the screaming footage, all the tears, all the lip-sewing…  But we both know the Joker, don’t we?”

Gamzee _did_ know the Joker.  And he realized he knew the shift coming over him, too, the fever burning in his fingers, the queasy turn of his stomach, the blurring vision… He knew this rage, now seeping into him again.  A sleepwalking rage.  A bone-breaking rage.  The Joker's lock-picking toy clattered on the ground, sounding like a memory, like remembering something fall rather than being the one who dropped it just then.  Gamzee thought,  _So this is why I always felt so motherfucking far away._

Honestly, Gamzee was only half-there as he threw himself forward, smile stretching wide, juggling club swinging for Nightwing’s face. 

…

“Oh, that’s a _nasty_ trick,” Nightwing crowed, dodging Gamzee’s attack like shadow fleeing effortlessly from a flame – if it _was_ Gamzee’s attack, even.  The lines were blurring again, growing heavy as dreaming.  Blurring _again_.  Gamzee knew that, really, knew it because he’d pounded people into the pavement before, because he’d found himself holding Joker gas cans without remembering where he’d picked them up.  It was too late.  He was falling.  That slime had soaked into him so deep, by then, it was squished into all the cracks of his brain like Jell-O in a mold.  “Oh, gotta hand it to the Joker – he’s a spooky chemist mastermind!”

“EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT NOW,” Kurloz thought, sounding pious, sounding sure.  Gamzee imagined how he’d looked in the semicircle gathered around the Joker’s underground throne, head bowed, eyes closed in divine understanding.  The Clown Prince of Crime.  A Clown Church in Gotham, a cult of disbelieving, of rejecting, of un-society.  The Joker was a merciless, hilarious messiah.  The Joker was with them then, deep in their minds, in their breath, in their bones.  That slime Gamzee’d eaten for so, so long was his bright hair, was the chemicals burning under his skin, stretching his smile wider and wider forever.  It all came down to the Joker, just like so much else in ruinous Gotham.  It all came down to the Joker, after all.

Gamzee lunged and struck, and Nightwing flipped away, knocking off the walls like in a pinball machine.  The hero was going easy on him, Gamzee knew.  He’d pried one of those crackling electric stun-sticks off his back, but he wasn’t really doing much with it, at first.  He was talking.  Always talking.  Didn’t he know it wasn’t going to do shit if Gamzee couldn’t answer him?

Gamzee cracked his juggling pin against the wall, and felt old stone crumble off – when had he become that strong?  He cracked his club against Nightwing’s foot, and heard the guy cuss like an old man – “Oh shit – I mean shoot, I mean –” before tumbling away.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt much, kid,” Nightwing said, now coming at Gamzee with a lot more fire.  It was the foot that did it, you know?  Motherfucker needed both feet to do all his twirls and acrobat things.  Gamzee got that.  It was almost a relief when the stun-stick met his chest, shaking through Gamzee’s bones, dropping him down on the cold, dirt-smeary Arkham stones.  He closed his eyes, actually – Gamzee closed his _own_ eyes, hoping he’d wake up somewhere else, hoping this was it.  He tried to uncurl his fingers, letting the juggling club fall.  Letting the fight end. 

But then he climbed back up, head lolling.  Sleepwalking?  He rose back up, and the laughter bubbling up from inside him didn’t sound like his own.

“Okay, I’ll give it to you – this trick is kinda neat,” Nightwing said, panting, face rigid with pain.  “I mean, it’s gross and exploitative and awful – way to go, Joker, I’d expect nothing less – but still.  Kinda neat.”

Maybe there was a way to make this better.  Gamzee’d always wanted to believe in hopeful things, in a miraculous Batman who might sweep in to save the day.  He’d always _wanted_ to have faith, if not in himself then in his brother, in his cult, in friends who’d stopped believing in him long ago.  And even then… Yeah, brother.  Even _now_.  Maybe there was a way for Gamzee to wrestle himself back, to take the parts of his mind that were his alone, still, his despite everything, and use them.

He reached inside, deeper than where his darker magics waited, deeper than the Joker and his father and his laughing cult, and he found himself talking to Karkat again.

…

When Gamzee and Karkat had been close, they would sometimes talk in the off-white hallway at their school.  They would slump against the wall and eat lunch, probably because Karkat didn’t have anyone else to sit with.  That’s where Gamzee imagined them, then, shoulders brushing, the electricity old and flickering, dead moths trapped inside the light fixtures.  He had finger-paint pictures in his backpack, getting all his books sticky and rainbow-ed.  There was a Spanish quiz next hour.  It was like a dream – or it _was_ a dream.  Gamzee’s dream, or Karkat’s dream, or both of theirs together because of some weird blood-magic Gamzee’d never really thought to fuck with yet.

It didn’t really matter, probably.

Point was, usually Karkat didn’t answer back when Gamzee tried to talk to him, but now he fucking _did_. 

Gamzee said, “I miss you, bro,” and Karkat shot back, “You’re the one who threw me out like year old milk, asshat.”

Gamzee said, “I’m fighting somebody I don’t want to fight.  In a motherfucking scary as _fuck_ prison hospital thing…  Asylum, you know.  And I don’t have anyone I can trust.”  And Karkat answered, “What, you don’t trust me all of a sudden?  And here I thought _you_ asked to sit together again.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Gamzee said.  His words were heavy and final, like balloons that were supposed to be full of helium suddenly sinking down and down into a dark sea.  It wasn’t a good simile, but that’s how it was, you know? 

“Sure there is,” Karkat offered.  His voice was gentle, too.  Like Nightwing’s.  Like it wasn’t supposed to be, right?  “There’s always _something_ you can do.  You’re doing this, right now, aren’t you?  Talking to me.  Sitting there looking like you did when your goldfish died.  Wake the fuck up.  It’s obvious you’ve still got something going for you.”

It was funny, and it was right.  Gamzee stirred inside the shell – stirred inside his mind, his puppet-skin – and found he could still reach out and grab at all those other heads around him.  He was keeping all the guards in dreaming, wasn’t he?  He was sketching out horrible, unsolvable mazes for the Riddler and being bitter as fuck about it, too.  He could feel Kurloz behind him, his mind like a puzzle box, full of contradiction and self-righteousness.  He could feel Nightwing’s mind, focused almost completely on throwing his weight against that one good foot, dodging attacks he shouldn’t have really had to dodge at all. 

 _“Sorry, Babs,”_ Nightwing’s mind thought, though his voice couldn’t quite choke it out.  Who the fuck was Babs?  _“Probably should’ve taken this one more seriously, huh?”_

“What’d I fucking tell you?” Karkat asked.  Or, Karkat didn’t ask.  Maybe Gamzee only imagined Karkat asking it?  That voice was far away, now, and the school hallway had dripped into nothing, like sidewalk chalk running from the rain.  “Looks like you’ve actually got _choices_.  Heh.  Dumbass.”

If Gamzee curled his fist – Punchline strong, but different, but, like, a mind-fist or some shit – around Nightwing’s thoughts, he could click them off.  He could set him to dreaming, too.  And then what?  Maybe he’d free Kurloz, puzzling out the Joker’s mysterious lock-picking toys until everything clicked into place.  Maybe he wouldn’t have a choice about the matter, you know?  Or maybe – and this felt real, felt possible – he _would_ be choosing.   Maybe he’d gather Kurloz up, the way he’d been gathered from school, bundled into old hoodies with holes in the sleeves.  Maybe they’d go home together, to their dual callings, to their understanding.  Maybe Gamzee would be able to forgive, to surrender. 

Or maybe, and this was trickier – but this would be the _actual_  “punchline,” motherfuckers – Gamzee could’ve reached way, way far away, and found the alien mind, the impossible contradiction, that was the Joker himself.  Maybe he could even put that laughing messiah to sleep, and surrender to Nightwing nice and gentle like.  _“Take me to the Batman, bro?”_ he could’ve asked.  _“If anyone can make me better, it’s him, right?”_

 __Gamzee felt his arm twist back, burning with fever, burning with a rage that was only half-his, and he raised his juggling pin up high.  Nightwing had tripped back against somebody’s cell – Harley Quinn’s, it looked like, though it was empty as Gamzee’s apartment back home, nowadays.  Empty as a home.

“Come on, kid, please?” Nightwing asked.  It was a wheedling voice.  It was a _“Go to bed now, like I keep saying,”_ voice.  A big-brother voice, like Kurloz was once – like Kurloz could’ve been, still, maybe.  Maybe not.

“Sorry,” Gamzee said.  He wanted to say it more than he remembered wanting most things, probably because Nightwing had said it to him first.  It'd sounded like he really fucking meant it too, you know?  Gamzee wanted just say _‘Sorry’_ enough that the word came out in his own voice, though shaking, though giggling, though raspy like he just woke up.  “I gotta…  I have to leave.”

Gamzee gave Nightwing good dreams, then – circus dreams, that land of tents and mirth that didn’t have to be the Joker’s, or any one person’s, not at all.  He gave him dreams without a broken foot, dreams full of flying and crowing with this “Babs” person.  Whoever the fuck.  It didn’t matter.  Gamzee could tug at the guy’s subconscious a little, even if he wouldn’t look too far.  He didn’t think it was gonna do any harm.  And then he dragged Nightwing down the hall, limbs still twitching, still burning, clown paint sweated and cried almost right off his face.  It was an absolute fucking mess, he was sure.  He probably looked like an actual nightmare.  You know, that was one of the names some of the Joker Cult guys had suggested for him, before he ducked right out of things best as he could?  Before the slime. Nightmare.  What the fuck, right?

Gamzee dragged Nightwing into a hall closet.  Some janitor’s closet?  He tucked him in behind the mops, behind one of those big buckets that usually had gross soapy water inside.  It was clean, now, and the place smelled antiseptic, more like hospitals were really supposed to than the rest of the goddamn asylum.   Gamzee made sure the hero’s head was propped up on some extra paper towels; he made sure he was nice and hidden from view.  Checked from the doorway, even.  Pretended to be just some guard person, strolling on by. 

Nightmare.  Can you believe it?

Would “Nightmare” have left an actual Bat vigilante to wake up nice and cozy on his own?  Fuck no.

The Joker tugged at Gamzee’s mind – he could feel him wormed in deep.  It was honestly kind of hard to keep shaking himself awake, to keep flexing his fingers, to keep pumping his own goddamn blood.  The slime had left holes in Gamzee.  It was easy to see, now that he was clear, now that he was angry and _looking_ for them.  Long clown-paint-white fingers could reach right on through those holes, no problem.  It was hard to move his own legs, to walk in his own slow and meandering way, but Gamzee did it.  He did it all the way back into the hallway where Kurloz waited, down at the end of things, staring with crackling eyes and a bunched-up smile, all scabs and string. 

“I SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED IN YOU, BROTHER,” Kurloz said.  “WE MADE YOU BETTER THAN I’D KNOWN.  NOW, LET ME OUT AND WE’LL GO HOME.”

But Gamzee didn’t slow, to look at Kurloz, to remember him, to want his brother back.  If he had let himself stop, no knowing what the motherfuck he would’ve done.  No. 

No, Gamzee just kept walking, out and away.

And maybe Karkat would wake up from a different dream, later, like, _“Holy shit that was weird,”_ and see there’d actually been an Arkham fight, an Arkham break in.  Maybe he’d put the pieces together and come looking.  Who could say?

Maybe that infamous, thundering Punchline would become the Joker’s enemy, both his sons lost, lost conveniently to the Clown Prince and his gambling.  Gambling with family, with souls, with slime that ate at your mind...  Maybe two clown churches would rise in Gotham, warring, screaming, based off chaos and based off divine right, based off the whims of violent, painted-up messiahs.    

Maybe.

For that moment, though, Gamzee was as alone as he'd been in a long, long time.  He wasn't going to worry about any of it, yet -- he was walking out into the night as his clown shoes honked goofily along with him, in control of his skin for a while, smiling up at the Bat Signal as it watched over everyone alike.   He had made his choice.  He had made _a_ choice, and even that felt something like a miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading this far~~~ I hope you enjoyed the story. 
> 
> Have a great day! Or night! Or BOTH!!!
> 
> (Oh my goodness, formatting this took a while!! All the paragraphs wanted to indent, and I had to be like "NO!" a gazillion times....)


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